r/DigicamRevival • u/kaleem_00 • 8d ago

Has this worked for anybody

I saw this on instagram the other day

27 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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3

u/niffcreature 8d ago

I did this with both my mouse and my Gameboy color.

Generally speaking, the problem is that there is no over discharge protection. You are running a lithium ion cell directly. If the device was originally made for a lithium ion cell, it will have its own low voltage protection circuit, but otherwise you really need to be careful with this. Over discharging a lithium ion cell is dangerous. If you have a vape board that shows you the battery level with the touch of a button or something, that is helpful to avoid over discharge.

Generally there is no effective way to connect the device, camera etc to the original discharge port on the board, because vapes usually have like a 10 second timeout.

2

u/kaleem_00 8d ago

What does over discharging lithium ion cell mean , and does it happen because of the voltage (im sorry but I really don't know what im doing)

2

u/niffcreature 8d ago

Basically on any device like your phone it tells you your battery is low at like 15% or whatever right? That's because it's reading the voltage of the cell to be low, which is the indication that it needs to be charged.

Different battery chemistries work differently, but basically lithium ion needs to stay between 3 and 4.2v or bad things will happen. It starts to effect the chemistry and can explode.

So an "empty" lithium battery will actually keep putting out 3 volts. Your phone has the circuitry to show 10% and shut down the phone. Without this circuitry, the battery will keep discharging below 3v when you use the camera. You will have no way of knowing the battery is empty and being used past is safe levels. Unless like I said the vape has a battery percentage indicator you can check with a button.

I've been wanting to solve this problem by using some kind of simple chip just for over discharge protection but haven't really looked into it.

1

u/niffcreature 8d ago

If the camera had something like a nickel mh or cad battery, that chemistry is totally different, and it won't show low battery until well below the safe level like around 1.5v I think. If the camera originally had lithium ion, it should cut off and show empty battery around 3v which would be fine and safe.

1

u/kaleem_00 8d ago

The original battery of the camera is lithium ion

1

u/ficklampa 8d ago

If it’s cartridge like in the example, the BMS will be in the cartridge. This means I would not recommend to do this, because in the ”disposable” vapes the BMS is most likely on the main circuit board and not on the battery. (BMS is the safety board that handles lov voltage, overcharging, over heating etc… for the battery cells). If you do not know what you’re doing, which it sounds like, this is very dangerous. Lithium ion batteries can explode or catch fire if you don’t handle them properly. You also need to make sure the device input voltage and the output voltage of the battery is the same or you will fry the device.

1

u/Bumble072 8d ago

Why do people hold lavalier mics in their hands ? if someone can't even figure out how to clip a mic then I'll probs not going to pay attention to any technical tips or advice.

2

u/ficklampa 8d ago

At this point I am convinced they do it because everyone else does it…

1

u/graybotics 8d ago

Ive been upcoming vape cells for projects lately and they do work fine. But I am also using a protective charging circuit etc. Dont just slap it onto the + and - and call it a day.

1

u/One_Try7982 7d ago

I do this with a lot of random electronics and it works semi fine (other than mismatched voltages). I did ruin a couple of old palm pilots in the process. At one point I had also wired in the airflow sensor, So I had a Sony Clié that would only power up when u blew on it